I'm just starting to get into programing and I was wondering if any of you have any suggestions about the program I should use. Presently I've been using Visual Basic 6.0 and have found that it is very simple. Any tutorials links would also be helpful.


Thanks

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*Bjorn*
muhahahha FIRE!!!!!!!! >:) ;(.
hi

I don't personally have anything to help you, but I do demand you make me a program that makes mario dance in the background endlessly. He must do these dances: The chicken, the Robot, the Electric Slide, Breakdance. Breakdancing MUST be randomly generated, so as to continue to be entertaining. KTHXBAI get to work >

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There is no signature

Bjorn...I remember that name...oh yes, that 23 page thread titled "Girls..." was started by you!

On a more serious note, I personally use C++ for most programming. But if you like the fancy shmancy coding IDE, I'd try out Delphi if I were you. And if you don't like either, you could go back to Visual Basic...

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"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

-Albert Einstein

[This message has been edited by SG1_129 (edited February 23, 2004).]

If you want to get around learning the Windows GDI C++ coding use Visual basics

Although the industry standard for software developement is mostly C++, so you're gonna want to learn it sometime to get into better places

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---Thomas jefferson, Declaration of Independance.

yeah I have C++ to

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*Bjorn*
muhahahha FIRE!!!!!!!! >:) ;(.
hi

If you ever want to get into advanced coding for anything, please don't start with VB. Please do yourself a favor and start with a real language like C/C++.

At least try Delphi! I think it's much better than Visual Basic for making simple Windows programs.

After that, try learning Java and/or C++.

Hey, he asked for VB stuff. At least someone point him towards some stuff.

This site: http://kavosh.irost.net/books/mcp/teach_yourself.htm has the online versions of the VB5 and VB script "Teach Yourself in x Hours/Days" books, as well as many many other books. I find that site VERY helpful.

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MadQuack on Military school: Pro's: I get to shoot a gun. Con's: Everything else.
"I'm going to beat you until the laws of physics are violated!!" ! Maeve's Warcry

RIP -MaDaVentor-. You will be missed.

I'm going along with the consensus here. Pascal/Delphi is good for learning (as Pascal was designed to be the learning language). C++ is a great language to use when you're trying to get a solid grasp of what your computer is really doing.

Basic teaches you some habits that are very poor practise in other languages. It's probably the number one language for beginners to avoid, even if you consider the fact that it's the easiest to learn.

Overall, I'd recommend C++, but part of the reason is because I have the most experience with it. There are some excellent C++ tutorials out there, and it's very easy to find books about it. (When you reach intermediate skill, I strongly recommend The C++ Programming Language as a reference)

I don't condone the use of drugs or Visual Basic.

I've always gotten the impression that VB is really meant for experienced C coders who want to create a quick and very dirty UI app, not for general purpose / n00b programming.

Yeah, but unfortunatly everyone uses it as a general purpose n00b programing language...

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The future is here, and all bets are off.

In what way is Visual Basic "not a real language"?

Oh great, here we go again.


"Come one, come all! See the Jon`C the C++ purist battle M. Pate the VB zealot in an all-out fight to the death!"

Im selling tickets. 5 dollars a pop. I figure I can make a killing.

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The future is here, and all bets are off.

This has been done before? Damn, must have missed it.

I'm not a "VB zealot", I'm just sick of people who seem to consider the language of their choice is the only choice that is acceptable. I can't think of any feature C++ has that VB lacks, with perhaps the exception of pointers. Sure, it's a bit slower, but then, how much does that matter if you're making a 2d game? Barely at all. And you save time in not going insane from indecipherable code.

The same way Klingon is not a real language. It's ugly and causes much pain when used.

Bah! That list is useless, Jon. It doesn't have Pascal.

[This message has been edited by UGG (edited February 24, 2004).]

Jon`C: That's a bunch of very pretty text, but unfortunately most of it means nothing to me. Visual Basic does not support "Generic Classes"? What is that and how is it different to what a "Class Module" does? If I don't even know what half of that stuff is, what are the chances that I'm going to use it?

That VB may not support a bunch of features that others do does not make it "not real" in the same way that just because English does not support case endings for nouns (pronouns excepted) makes it any less real than Latin.

[Edit: Well, I'm an idiot. It explains what each of those features are! OK, I'll read the explanations then respond again once I have an idea what they do... - Matt]

[This message has been edited by Matthew Pate (edited February 24, 2004).]

Hmm. I actually was wanting "inheritance" just yesterday...

Feature Renaming. Since VB doesn't support inheritance anyway, it wouldn't be of any use I'm not sure how much use it would be, anyway, but it would be nice to have.

Method Overloading seems pointless and rife for confusing. Using "Print_String("blabla")" and "Print_Number(int2)" is far less likely to confuse than using "Print" for both.

I can see no use for Operator Overloading.

I don't understand what the point of "Higher Order Functions" are.

Garbage collection would be useful, though it seems that it would lead to sloppy programming.

VB supports Uniform Access, though I don't think it's a fantastic idea, anyway. Surely it's better if I'm sure that I'm telling something to *do* something, or if I'm just telling it to change something about itself...

Class variables *seem* neat, although I can't think of a situation I'd actually use it in...

VB supports Access Control, which I think will be fairly useful, although you can get away without it by just not doing things you don't want to do. Are people just accidentally doing things they don't want themselves to do, or what?

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PROGRAMMER: I shan't use the Cow.moo function! I shan't!
VOICE: You *know* you want to! It's asking for it! They're ALL asking for it!
PROGRAMMER: Yeah! You're right!
COMPUTER: Moo!!!!
PROGRAMMER: *Buries head in hands* Nooooo! What have a done! Bessy, no! I still love you! Come back!

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Multithreading: Sure VB doesn't support it directly, but "DoEvents" will let you do multiple things concurrently...

Regular Expressions: No idea what this does.

Pointers: VB doesn't have it, but then, does it really need it?

Built-In Security: I'm not building anything to use the Internet, so it's not needed. I guess this makes using other people's VB apps a dicey procedure, but I haven't been caught by a VB virus even once...

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One thing about this list is that it focuses on object-oriented features, which VB is not. It has some of its features, sure, but it's not an OOL.

All of those features help programmers engineer and coordinate massive projects, which is one of the requirements of any effective production-quality programming language.

Again: Programming languages designed for larger-scale and high performance applications are not intended for people who are afraid to muck around in low-level code. They include a lot of features that aren't useful to people who don't immediately see their usefulness.

ie. regular expressions. It's a highly important feature for people who intend to do a lot of text processing/parsing. If you don't mess around with strings, you probably won't need this... but that doesn't make it any less of a helpful and important feature.

[This message has been edited by Jon`C (edited February 24, 2004).]

Aah, well I'm not trying to write an Operating System or programming language here, so my needs are slightly, *slightly* more modest

I accept that Visual Basic is a crippled piece of crap useless for any real programming task, but, dammit, I bought VB 5 six years ago and I intend to damn well get my money's worth!

(I used Dev-CPP for a bit, but it didn't respond the way the tutorials said it would, so I just went back to nice and easy VB... Yes, I'm a wuss...)

Probably the best language to start with right now is C#. But, it wasn't on your list, so you'll need to get Visual Studio .NET

If you want to work for a major software house, then, yes, it will be an advantage to learn C++ at some point. However, VB is used extensively in business for writing in-house programs. It's quick and gets the job done. When you're not looking to sell your code, that's actually more important. When you need to get an application out to your users by the end of the week that is effectively a front-end to a load of database calls, VB is the clear choice over C++.

C# is still unproven. There has yet to be a non-Windows .NET Framework implementation (and if there is a functional one already, I would hesitate to migrate my code over to such an untested platform).

If you learn C++, you'd be able to pick up C# in a matter of days anyways. Even C++ wasn't adopted widely for years after its introduction; .NET is still in its infant stages. My personal opinion would be to avoid any major .NET projects until Microsoft develops a much stronger support of it - which should come when Longhorn, the .NET OS is released, along with the .NET Framework 1.2 or 2.0 or whatever.

Well I'm the sadist amongst you all, so I'll only mention this plug once - "Use Java " (although most of you probably already knew this - I love these threads; a totally shameless excuse to plug Java )...

Stable, none-OS-dependent, which in turn makes it a very portable language ("write once, run anywhere"). Not to mention you can create robust, networkable, stand-alone applications, or add imaginative, interactive elements to web pages in the form of Java Applets

Not to mention the compiler provides a heck of a lot more constructive debug messages than C (and C++ I believe, although I haven't looked at C++ in depth).

As for VB: don't even mention those words to me - I'll admit it's great for drawing up quick GUIs to provide people with an idea of the "look-n-feel" of a program, but not really suited for large-scale projects. Plus it's dependent on the fact that people have the right VB-runtime files and, therefore, are running a Windows based OS (or emulator I suppose, though I've never tried it...)

Other than that, I totally agree with Jon C's comments about C#. To be honest, C is probably your easiest (procedural based language) learning curve and then branch out to C++ or *cough*PLUG-Java-PLUG*cough*...

-Jackpot

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"lucky_jackpot is the smily god..." - gothicX

"Life is mostly froth and bubble,
But two things stand in stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own"
("Ye Wearie Wayfarer" - by Adam Lindsay Gordon)

You can write cross-platform apps with C++...

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The future is here, and all bets are off.

Yes, but no one cares about Linux or Macs or Windows 3.11 for Workgroups or OS/2 or whatever other wacky OSes people run these days

[edit: Actually, I just completely forgot about that. Though given the overwhelming saturation of DirectX in games it doesn't really matter; you'd have to change it to Allegro or OpenGL or SDL or something, anyway.]

[This message has been edited by Matthew Pate (edited February 24, 2004).]

Actully, quite a lot of people care about Linux. Mac can go to hell . . and Win3.1 . . well. . .it was hell.

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The future is here, and all bets are off.

No, you see, even *you* don't care about Linux. This may be hard to believe, actually you have never existed before now; your memories are fake, implanted by the bizarre tendancies of a madman who secretly controls the world...

(I'm sure there's a PLIF comic for this occasion).

OK, OK! I admit it! People care about Linux! I'll do three "Hail GPL"s tonight in penance, is that OK?

If Linux had a C++ IDE that can hold a candle to Visual Studio, I'd run it full time. All of the existing ones are really clunky and don't 'feel' right.

...vi and gcc . . . what else do you need?

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The future is here, and all bets are off.

A lot.

Intellisense is nice when you're working with a lot of classes and a big API, plus it helps you avoid spelling errors. They *do* happen.

Decent project/class view.

Edit and continue debugging is nice. I don't really need it though.

Syntax highlighting and auto-indentation that doesn't suck. When I was using KDevelop and Anjuta I ended up just disabling it and doing it manually.

About a million other things that are incredibly nice but I take for granted and don't even notice anymore.

[This message has been edited by Jon`C (edited February 24, 2004).]

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"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

-Albert Einstein

I'm never going back to JBuilder now that I'm using Eclipse! Have you tried it, Jon?